EU needs to recognise value of immigrants

EU countries are tightening their borders when, economically, politically and socially, they should be embracing immigrants, write Peter Sutherland and Cecilia Malmstrom

Europe faces an immigration predicament. Mainstream politicians, held hostage by xenophobic parties, adopt anti-immigrant rhetoric to win over fearful publics, while the foreign-born are increasingly marginalised in schools and cities, and at the workplace. Yet, despite high unemployment across much of the continent, too many employers lack the workers they need.

Engineers, doctors, and nurses are in short supply; so, too, are farmhands and health aides. And Europe can never have enough entrepreneurs, whose ideas drive economies and create jobs.